


The Barrister and the Barista

by directedbysherlock



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Lestrolly, Love Story, Molstrade, Time Travel, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2402171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/directedbysherlock/pseuds/directedbysherlock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg Lestrade falls in love with a mysterious barista, but she is not everything she seems to be...</p>
<p>A ghostly love story to celebrate spooky October!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Barrister and the Barista

 

_Beautiful fanart by gaymac (formerly known as fucklestrade), thank you so much!_

 

For more than a year, Lestrade had come here every day after work for a pint and a smoke, tucking his briefcase full of legal files between his feet. When he first started coming to this pub, he had just wanted to forget; but now, he came to remember.

As a barrister, he regularly witnessed misfortune and despair from untimely accidents or unhappiness and bitter regret from love gone wrong. It had sometimes made him not want to get up in the morning or even bother to chat up a woman ever again, knowing how any day might end calamitously, as he statistically knew it actually _would_ end for some people. He himself had had such a day just two years ago when he’d been blindsided by his wife asking for a divorce, his world crashing around him.

After the divorce, with no one to come home to after work, he began to frequent the friendly little pub. It still seemed like just yesterday when he had met the lovely barista. He had noticed her immediately behind the bar; long shiny dark hair, chocolate brown eyes, pale alabaster skin. She had a quiet streak but always seemed happy to see him, routinely competent in pouring his draft without it ever running over the top as she chatted and smiled at him, which after a few days of return visits had turned into downright flirting.

It had been a while since anyone had flirted with him, especially someone so young and pretty. When she turned her attention on him, she made him feel like he was the only one in the pub she could see and his confidence and ego soared. He’d rather lost his way for a while after the divorce, but she made it all seem safe and easy again. It was like he’d known her forever, like he had finally found his missing piece.

Molly was her name, as soft and sweet a name to roll off the tongue as her skin was beneath his lips. There had come a night when she told him what time she got off, and he came back again to meet her, lighting up another cigarette under a street light in the dark while he waited for her to close up. That night they went back to his flat and they fell into each other’s arms with a ferociousness born of need and want, loneliness and hope, lust…and love? He wondered about that, then as now.  

That next morning he slid out of his bed and grabbed his shirt from the floor, already late for a meeting.  He dropped a kiss on her forehead as she yawned and stretched and smiled; but before he could get far she grabbed his hand and pulled him back in, suddenly serious, desire written on her face all over again. On the spot he made an uncharacteristic decision to call in sick. He hadn’t felt that way in a long time; happy, almost giddy, like a burden had been lifted from his soul. He gently rolled on top of her, his hips settling between her legs that were already spread for him, and lost himself inside of her.

When he was awoken later by a phone call, she had already gone, having crept out without a sound. He was shocked when a colleague frantically told him that there had been an explosion in his firm’s building. A gas leak, he said. Only Lestrade’s office, in particular, had been completely destroyed and had he been there, he would have surely been killed. Badly shaken, Lestrade called her, anxious to hear her soothing voice to calm his nerves but she did not answer and he left a message.

She did not call him back that afternoon, or that evening. With growing concern he called the pub to track her down and he still remembered the exact moment when he heard the truth; no one named Molly worked at the pub, not for a long time, anyway. There _had_ been a girl named Molly, quiet and pale with long brown hair, who had worked there but she had died in a car accident two years ago. He had ended the call without a word, and a quick internet search provided the final proof. Later that night, as he sat in the dark in his flat and he switched from his usual beer to something stronger, he knew there was something he could not deny: delusion or not, she had saved his life.

It never seemed real to him, that she technically did not exist; he could never get his head around it. He was not a fanciful man, but he could not forget her, could not forget how they had talked, how they had made love. Even these many months later, he still could not understand how but he could _feel_ her, waiting for him to come to her and to take his usual place.

Now, as the days passed from summer to autumn and still he sat in front of the pub with his beer and his smokes and his briefcase between his feet, he realized there was at least one thing he did not wonder about any more. He had loved her, his Molly. Somehow they had lost step with time and their paths had crossed. Irrationally, stubbornly, his heart still longing for her, he patiently waited for her to appear to him again at the pub, this possible portal through time, and he didn’t care how long it might take. Maybe he would see her standing outside in the doorway to the pub, catching some fresh air and watching passersby on her break as she so often had. He still looked through the front window,  hoping to see her behind the bar where she might feel his eyes on her,  hoping she might turn to catch his eye and give him that smile he missed so much.

And when he did see her, he would tell the ghost of Molly Hooper how much he loved her.


End file.
